


heavy hangs the head

by Missy



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Childhood, F/M, Growing Up, Humor, Introspection, Jewelry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-29
Updated: 2014-09-29
Packaged: 2018-02-19 06:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2378000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/pseuds/Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The slowly-evolving princesshood of one Amy Farrah Fowler: Explained.</p>
            </blockquote>





	heavy hangs the head

**Author's Note:**

  * For [debirlfan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debirlfan/gifts).



> Written for debirlfan for Rare Characters, and thank you RF for beta!

When Amy was a small girl, she’d dreamed of being something more than her mother’s disappointment. 

At first, her focus had landed on ballet, and Amy devoted herself to the dance with desperation. She tried to train her toes into points, taking on the figural shape of a sweet sugar dancer perched atop a candy cake. She would be like the princesses that adorned her wastebasket back home. But for all of her training, her teacher said that her limbs were ungainly and graceless, and she didn’t know how to maintain her hold. Amy’s calves and thighs ached, but her heart burned pure and true. She knew that the other children stared at her, and no matter how enthusiastically she tried to make friends they turned up their little noses and walked away.

Eventually her mother said the inevitable words, pulled her out of the class and told her to focus on learning some domestic duty. “Girls like you aren’t meant for dancing,” she declared. “You were meant for harder, more practical work. Like hauling coal or cleaning chimneys! Why, look at those thick fingers of yours!”

Amy considered it something of a blessing in those foggy early years of her youth. If her body wasn’t good enough to be worked upon, wasn’t made for support and attention, then she could focus on turning her mind into a special whirl of solid ideas, perfectly calculated and acted upon. She could solve the world.

Pretty tiaras weren’t meant to be perched upon every head after all.

**** 

Amy couldn’t help herself.

She knew she was plain and awkward, and that no one was ever going to ask her to the prom, but still she lingered in front of the dressmaker’s window and considers the probability of buying an outfit. She had the fifty dollars the shop needed, and she could probably alter the seams all by herself. 

But no. She had no date, and no romantic promise for the future. She might as well plot out a life settled before the couch with her latest experiment now, and cross her fingers in the hope that the TV wouldn’t go on the blink again.

She spent the night alone with her senior thesis; it was a fetal pig dissection, a pint of Ben and Jerrys and an episode of Beverly Hills 90210 while everyone else she knew went dancing. She reasoned to herself that it was the sensible choice, and warmer in front of the set where she could laugh at her own corny jokes without worrying about having to impress a nonexistent man.

Her freedom – her useless freedom – would be the most important thing to her as her college years stretched out at her feet like a desert road, as she became a companion to monkeys and starfish and petri dishes. She would try to concentrate on the sciences. They had bolstered her, when glitter that obsessed her imagination had failed.

**** 

Nearing thirty, she felt glamorous for the first time in her life. The attention of a man should to do that to a girl, she supposed, though she wouldn’t know from experience. In Amy’s case, this newness came in the form of Sheldon Cooper, an oddly mannered scientist whom she managed to find through an online dating service. It was supposed to be a business arrangement, a logical exchange of sperm for ovum. Somehow it had turned into a moment of handholding, a kiss, a bond, an agreement. 

And it felt wonderful and painful at the same time. Amy had always supposed finding love hurt on some level, just like the song warned her it would. But in actuality it felt like given birth in some primitive, ugly , unfathomable way. She felt alive and yet uncertain being beheld by him, struggling under his perceptions and his disbelief and his occasional flashes of awkward warmth. He didn’t want a lover, he wanted a surrogate; then he didn’t want a surrogate and he wanted a girlfriend, but love to Sheldon meant so many different things. He might enjoy holding her hand now and again, while nobody else was looking. Now he might want a partner, just the thing that Amy had no idea how to be. Maybe she could talk him into loving her wholly, with enough time spent between them.

Amy had faith that she could nudge him toward the relationship she craved with every spec of her humanity. But even if they never reached those celestial shores, she realized Sheldon had brought so much richness into her life thanks to the friends he’d introduced her to. There were Bernadette and Penny, her sisters and her erstwhile best friends, both of whom were likely to go on loving her regardless of whom she dated; there was sweet, semi-foolish Leonard, who was blind to nothing but Penny’s imperfections. There was Howard, of the sweaty palms and the constant need for validation, and quiet Raj who feared a life of loneliness as his friends developed relationships and paired off with others.

One afternoon she found herself standing outside of the jewelry store on her walk back to the lab from her lunch break and considered walking inside, but her hand froze on the doorknob and kept her from entering the shop and exiting with a tissue-paper thin nightgown. She had no need of it, as long as Sheldon didn’t notice her sexually.

*** 

And then came the magic day, that wonderful day, when Penny presented her with a box containing a beautiful tiara.

It wasn’t as encrusted with diamonds; it wasn’t filled to the brim with anything more than rhinestones. Someone watching it sparkle from atop her head would call it a cheap imitation, and likewise peg her as a fake and false example of royal stock. But oh, was it perfect to Amy! When she watched herself spin before the mirror she felt like a movie star, like an heiress rich in jewels, like an angel dipped in stardust, like a star clad in ermine. She felt, in short, special in ways she’d never dared or dreamed to feel.

And it was all her best friend’s doing! She owed Penny everything, absolutely everything – her friendship, her trust and her loyalty, and a thousand things more. The woman had finally made her a princess, and it was all so beautiful, all so worth it, and almost more than she deserved. She would have to pay her back somehow.

Now when she walked toward Sheldon, she saw green lights instead of red ones flashing in the center of his eyes. One day, when she met him at the altar, she’d be able to give him her hand and smile, glittering the way a princess ought to. She would be the perfect bride beside his glowing and adoring groom, finally worthy of a man’s love, finally the princess she always dreamed she’d be.

The monkey would be a ring bearer. They’d made a deal.

*** 

Sheldon asked her why she felt the need to have a tiara. She was perfectly pleasant without it. In fact she might be twice as attractive sans ornamentation, as gaudy displays didn’t do much to arouse Sheldon’s libido anyway….Not that Sheldon had much of a libido to arouse.

She was old enough to understand that he didn’t have to fit the mold she’d made I her mind as a seven year old failed ballerina, a mold of the man who would ride up on his white horse and save her. She was old enough to understand that she didn’t need to be a princess to be happy, either – though sometimes it was fun to play the part, to put on the dress or the crown and to wave at her imaginary subjects. 

Amy knew she’d have to climb up on that palfrey herself, check it for genetic abnormalities, and ride it into the sunset. And she was more than capable of doing so.

But Sheldon was so curiously literal of temperament and of mind. She supposed he meant exactly what he said when he looked at her; she attractive without that crown.

Maybe one day she’d look in the mirror and see what he saw. Maybe.

But until then she’d cherish her crown, and hold herself high; higher than she ever had, higher than when she was a sad, lonely little ballerina who just wanted to fit in.

**Author's Note:**

> This fanfiction uses characters from **The Big Bang Theory** , all of whom are the property of **CBS Television**. No money was gained from the writing of this fanfiction and all are used under the strictures of of the Berne Convention.


End file.
